


The Harrowing

by TheWoodburn



Series: Of Feathers and Ash [4]
Category: Batman - Fandom, Red Hood - Fandom
Genre: Last Kira POV for awhile, Magic, Not Beta Read, not sorry, please read and review
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:45:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWoodburn/pseuds/TheWoodburn
Summary: The alley wasn’t dark to her. Mold grew over the old bricks, etching them with patches of teal luminescence that were slowly consuming the paint, blurring the letters with a more subtle message. A trail of muddy water ran down the middle, like a ribbon of emerald light. The edges of garbage cans, stacked outside a restaurant, glowed in a rainbow of colors, with layers of decomposing food stretching back for days. The cat huddled under some steps was a dingy blob of mahogany. The streaks some human in a hurry had sprayed on one wall were a smoking purple, layered over the years of grime and worn graffiti.





	

Darkness, angry clouds boiling between buildings, and no electric lights that hadn’t been shot out long ago. Not a good part of town. Not a part where people liked light being shed on their activities.

Didn’t matter. Nature thumbed its nose at human preferences, sending the lightning that flashed overhead, strobing the dark street and the small alley that branched off from it with searing white. And causing the graffiti on the walls to practically leap off the old bricks.

The aftereffects lingered, crowding the small space with strange symbols in brilliant neon. They hung in the air for a moment, like bright banners, beautiful, ethereal, almost tangible. And then slowly faded.

She didn’t mind.

She didn’t need them.

The alley wasn’t dark to her. Mold grew over the old bricks, etching them with patches of teal luminescence that were slowly consuming the paint, blurring the letters with a more subtle message. A trail of muddy water ran down the middle, like a ribbon of emerald light. The edges of garbage cans, stacked outside a restaurant, glowed in a rainbow of colors, with layers of decomposing food stretching back for days. The cat huddled under some steps was a dingy blob of mahogany. The streaks some human in a hurry had sprayed on one wall were a smoking purple, layered over the years of grime and worn graffiti.

All was visible, all was light.

But nothing here was as interesting as the large, glowing footsteps, like puddles of radioactive waste, that she had been following.  
They wove across the muddy width of the alley, so clear, she thought she could have reached out and touched one. Could have picked it up out of the muck and held it in her hand. Could have—

A door opened up ahead, sending a bright, artificial beam into the night, a river of smelly ozone that drowned all the other, fainter lights. Like a wash of acid across a floor. It made her want to flinch, to hiss like the cat under some stairs was doing, before it turned its bushy tail and leapt into the night.

But she didn’t. She didn’t move at all. She was perched already in shadow, and the light served only to increase it. The wedge of deep blue-gray around her deepened to inky black, the open door providing additional contrast.

Not that it mattered. The human standing silhouetted in the rectangle of light was as night-blind as they all were, and cocky. So much so that a cigarette dangled from his lips, its deep red tip bright even against the electric field behind him. He may as well have had a target on his chest.

But she didn’t take advantage of it. He wasn’t the one she wanted. But he smelled like him.

The cage door had clanged down, and they had gone. But the scent had remained. The same scent that was clinging to the guard’s skin now.

Fodder, then. Sent out to make sure the master’s many enemies weren’t lying in wait. Or if they were, to act like one of the canaries the humans used to put down their mine shafts. Nothing more than a walking early-warning signal, someone whose spilt blood would serve as an alarm no human could ignore.

Minutes passed. A car pulled up at the end of the alley, headlights off, and glided to a stop. The human raised a hand in greeting and went down the few short steps to the alley floor.

The car door opened; the driver got out and leaned against the side of the vehicle, legs crossed, body relaxed. “Got a spare?”

He was human, too. The voice harsh, discordant. Not the real driver, then. Just someone who brought the car around and was now waiting to hand it over.

“Sure.” The first guard flicked half a pack of cigarettes through the air, the cellophane side flashing for a second in the light from the door.

“Funny man,” the other said. “What am I supposed to light it with? My finger?”

“You don’t come too prepared, do you?” the first guard groused, reaching for something in his pocket.

“Trying to quit.”

And then, for a split second, both men were watching a lighter follow the same arc as the cigarettes. Maybe they didn’t trust their partners, and wanted to see every hand’s turn. Or perhaps it went deeper. An instinctive knowledge that they weren’t the only things that hide in shadow.

Like the one she melted into as a tall figure came through the door behinds the human.  
He was human-slow, with a heavy tread: another guard. He sent a disinterested glance around the room, checking everything, seeing nothing.

“Clear,” he said, and she mouthed it with him.

A clock ticked on a wall, heavy, loud. The smoking human finished his cigarette and crushed it underfoot, scattering a stale chemical scent on the breeze.

Then there were more footsteps on the stairs, quiet this time, light. Almost silent. Three, the two in front young, bright, warm. The one in back old, dark, like a pool of still, stagnant water.

And she moved, in the instant before it was caught, just a blur against the night, unseen, unheard. Across the alley to the car, sliding through the door the left ajar.

The two guards stopped abruptly, halfway between one step and the next. But nobody spoke, nobody moved. It was as if time itself stood still.

One second, two.

“Sir?” the human said, confused.

The old one didn’t answer.

She had done nothing wrong, made no mistakes. But sometimes it didn’t matter.

Outside, the clouds cracked open and rain began to fall. Light at first, and then heavier, pattering against the roof, plinking off the metal trash cans, causing one of the waiting humans to curse.

She had only moments before this was discovered. Her eyes watch for a moment more before before letting herself fall into shadows.

—

The people were clustered together in a little knot far below, in the center of the cavernous space. It wasn’t a storehouse like some of the others. There were large pieces of rusting machinery hunched in the shadows, like sleeping giants, visible against the starlight filtering in from a gap in the roof. The faint light also glinted off the crossbeams cutting through the air just below, like the one on which she was balanced.

A factory, then. But one long abandoned and unused, with no slick smell of oil or harsh tang of gasoline. Just dust and rust and rot. And a bright thread of life running through it from the grasses pushing up through the cracked concrete floor.

It was not echoed in most of the people, despite the fact that all of them were on their feet and some were quite animated.

They did not appear to be enjoying the meeting.

The air shimmered around them in wildly fluctuating colors, nervous purple, angry red, and the bright orange of annoyance, blending into a cloud the hue of a bruise that stank of suspicion, recriminations, panic. No, it was less like a bruise than a gathering storm, with the sparks like threads of lightning in the heavy atmosphere. But he was the sickly yellow-green of a rotten soul, one that infects others. Humans had a name for him but she knew his true name, the name of his soul: Pestilence.

And then he chuckled.

“You think this is a joke?” one of the humans lashed out at. He was a large man, swarthy, with hard black eyes and an off-center nose he hadn’t bothered to try to conceal. He was dressed in jeans, a generic polo and a Windbreaker, the cheapness of the outfit belied by the expensive watch on one hairy wrist. He was one of the more powerful of the assembled dealers, second-level easily, perhaps a weak first. And he was angry.

She would let this go on, and it would solve her problem easily. So she backs into the shadows and waits, still silent as the grave. Obsidian lashes close over lime green. When they open again, it is time.

The two guards leapt over the stairs and, a second later, hit the floor. One still wearing a snarl; the other with a strangely blank expression. Surprised.

The Joker looks at her and laughs. She nestles deeper into her magic as the Joker cackles about Batsy and heroes.

“There are no heroes here,” She tells him.

The Joker blinks at her before asking, “And what are you?”

There is madness in his eyes, but also brilliance. He is not to be underestimated but mindgames no longer work on her.

She smiles at him, the smile that speaks of a madness so much deeper than his own, a madness that has aged and thickened over a millennia.

The Joker can still feel fear; it’s written plainly on his face. Her smile widens. “Oh pitiful shadow lost in the darkness, bringing torment and pain to others, what a damned soul wallowing in your sin,” she pauses. “Do you remember Robin?”

“The Boy Blunder?” Joker says. “Of course I do. Do you mean the first one or the one that died so ignobly?” He backs up, raising his fists. “Are we gonna fight, Lady?”

“No,” she says. “This is vengence. So I am to ferry you to hell.”

“Beyond midnights veil lies the revenge your victims could not exact on their own.” She breathed, and he blanched. His fear flooded her nostrils as he recognized her—not who she was but what. She smiled. She liked that. Wanted more, wanted to close the spell, to jerk back, to tear out his existence in the same moment that she made him part of The Harrowing.

But not yet.

She put the past death of her Lord into his mind, the whole scene. His face as the door slammed shut, and the face of the one swinging the crowbar. The one she would have.

She smiles. "Perhaps it is time to die."

It doesn’t even take five minutes. Thanks to the ancient strength she possessed, the Joker is left in pieces, body serving as food for her hounds, and soul recreated into another piece of The Harrowing. He died laughing, but there isn’t much humor in the sound.

Their grievance had to be avenged. And she is vengence.

 

 


End file.
